Team Formation

TEAM DRAWS

Our league strives to form balanced teams by distributing players across teams as fairly as possible. New teams are drawn each year prior to the start of the practice season at a meeting chaired by the Player Agent with the Division Director.

Girls are grouped in pools based on age, skill and experience as follows:

Pitchers pool: A girl who pitched in at least 25% of her team's games in a previous season will be placed in the pitcher's pool. Players maybe added to the pitcher's pool by the training committee based on improvement, talent level, and maintenance of private pitching lessons

Catcher’s pool: Catchers may be similarly placed if age appropriate.

Returning All Stars: Girls who played on or who were elected to on an All Star team in the previous season are placed in this pool.

Graduating All Stars: This group includes girls who played on or were elected to an All Star team in a lower division in the previous season.

Returning players: Returning players are placed in this pool and are drawn to teams in descending age order.

New players: Experienced players – 10U and above only – who are new to our league are evaluated and placed into the “experienced” pool.

Once the number of teams in a division is determined, pitchers are placed on teams by the number they are ranked in the pitching pool (e.g., the best pitcher on team #1 and so on). This in turn determines the order in which players are selected. Teams draw in serpentine order, from the first team to last team and then in reverse order. For example, if there are 4 teams in the division, teams will draw in the following order:

Round

Team 1, Team 2, Team 3 and Team 4 – pitcher & catcher placement

Team 4, Team 3, Team 2 and Team 1

Team 1, Team 2, Team 3 and Team 4

Team 4, Team 3, Team 2 and Team 1

The process begins by placing pitchers from pitchers pool, catchers from the catching pool, followed by returning All Stars, graduating All Stars, returning players and new players. Rounds continue until all players are placed on teams. Integrated into this procedure is the fact that daughters of staff members will be placed on their parents' team.